Onaona tread water, listening to Robert in silence as he spoke. His words rattled loosely around the cavern, bouncing across the stone walls and skating across the surface of the water, giving it a depth of sound he would be hard pressed to achieve in the open. It was a beautiful effect, and it was with effort that the Otani listened to the meaning rather than the sound of his words.
She tried to understand, she really did. But she could feel that she was missing some enormous, intrinsically human concept, and without it she could feel his explanation being thrown into this hole in her perception and disappearing. Her facial features slowly morphed, taking on his northern features, his narrowed eyes. Her brow pulled thoughtfully down over her new eyes, mirroring his, before her face would rearrange back to her old features. She noted the way the words seemed to catch on his lips, and how his tone turned revenant as he spoke of Lhavit. She tried to imagine what he described of his home in such in loving detail, and imagined she loved it too. She reached inside herself and tried to feel what he was feeling, how it must feel to leave behind everything you loved for some great unknown. A mingling of grief and love with a powerful stab of hope.
But nothing came to her. She played with the idea, twisting and moving it to try and fit it around her perception of the world, but it never quite fit. What was she missing? Robert, and by extension humanity, had never felt so far out of her reach.
"I don't understand", she admitted, her voice tight and anxious. "What does any of that mean? Why do you feel this way?" With a splash she pulled herself from the water and climbed up beside him, as if peering closer into his face would help her make sense of this baffling creature. "Why does it feel like you have one eye over your shoulder, always looking behind you? Why do these memories mean so much to you, when they've already been experienced? Don't love your mountain anymore, love the present! Love Syka, love the sea! You'll be able to see the ocean from every city, you'll never be homesick again!" she grappled desperately for a solution for his melancholy and homesickness, not having a clear idea of what it was, or even that he might not even want it to be cured. What should she do? How could she uproot a human so sentimental about the past?
"The sea is constant yet always changing. You can live in the past and the present at the same time. Isn't that better? You can have both! Please forget Lhavit. It doesn't deserve whatever part of you you left behind there."
He explained it like it was a physical thing, like he left something behind in Lhavit so he had enough room in his soul to take a piece of the city with him. Was that what it meant to have a home? This exchange of souls? To exist forever in this place and in return have it exist in you? She yearned to reach inside and pull it out. Maybe then she could pour seawater in the wound it left behind.
"I know", she brightened as a thought slipped in through the chaos Robert had riled in her mind. "Why don't you love me instead? Not everything has to pass. I'll never age, I'll never die, I will live forever by the grace of god. You won't have to feel that sorrow, because I will never fade. Do you see? Please. Make this your only home. Love me first, then you will learn to love the ocean."
Giving him no time to react, Onaona leaned forward and kissed him.
The desperate act was surprisingly underwhelming for both parties. He was warm and solid and tasted like cocktails and something so alarmingly human. Yet having witnessed the act before but never preformed it, the Otani didn't realize there was more to it than the feel and the taste. She put no wanting behind it, no love, just curiosity. It was chaste and perfunctory, a question rather than a statement. Her lips were still and cold, salted with seawater and distracted by the many wheeling thoughts the human had put in her head.
She tried to understand, she really did. But she could feel that she was missing some enormous, intrinsically human concept, and without it she could feel his explanation being thrown into this hole in her perception and disappearing. Her facial features slowly morphed, taking on his northern features, his narrowed eyes. Her brow pulled thoughtfully down over her new eyes, mirroring his, before her face would rearrange back to her old features. She noted the way the words seemed to catch on his lips, and how his tone turned revenant as he spoke of Lhavit. She tried to imagine what he described of his home in such in loving detail, and imagined she loved it too. She reached inside herself and tried to feel what he was feeling, how it must feel to leave behind everything you loved for some great unknown. A mingling of grief and love with a powerful stab of hope.
But nothing came to her. She played with the idea, twisting and moving it to try and fit it around her perception of the world, but it never quite fit. What was she missing? Robert, and by extension humanity, had never felt so far out of her reach.
"I don't understand", she admitted, her voice tight and anxious. "What does any of that mean? Why do you feel this way?" With a splash she pulled herself from the water and climbed up beside him, as if peering closer into his face would help her make sense of this baffling creature. "Why does it feel like you have one eye over your shoulder, always looking behind you? Why do these memories mean so much to you, when they've already been experienced? Don't love your mountain anymore, love the present! Love Syka, love the sea! You'll be able to see the ocean from every city, you'll never be homesick again!" she grappled desperately for a solution for his melancholy and homesickness, not having a clear idea of what it was, or even that he might not even want it to be cured. What should she do? How could she uproot a human so sentimental about the past?
"The sea is constant yet always changing. You can live in the past and the present at the same time. Isn't that better? You can have both! Please forget Lhavit. It doesn't deserve whatever part of you you left behind there."
He explained it like it was a physical thing, like he left something behind in Lhavit so he had enough room in his soul to take a piece of the city with him. Was that what it meant to have a home? This exchange of souls? To exist forever in this place and in return have it exist in you? She yearned to reach inside and pull it out. Maybe then she could pour seawater in the wound it left behind.
"I know", she brightened as a thought slipped in through the chaos Robert had riled in her mind. "Why don't you love me instead? Not everything has to pass. I'll never age, I'll never die, I will live forever by the grace of god. You won't have to feel that sorrow, because I will never fade. Do you see? Please. Make this your only home. Love me first, then you will learn to love the ocean."
Giving him no time to react, Onaona leaned forward and kissed him.
The desperate act was surprisingly underwhelming for both parties. He was warm and solid and tasted like cocktails and something so alarmingly human. Yet having witnessed the act before but never preformed it, the Otani didn't realize there was more to it than the feel and the taste. She put no wanting behind it, no love, just curiosity. It was chaste and perfunctory, a question rather than a statement. Her lips were still and cold, salted with seawater and distracted by the many wheeling thoughts the human had put in her head.